In 1972, Emily Watts Card tried to buy a house. She had a doctorate, a salary, and a position as a legislative fellow in the United States Senate. But the bank wanted her husband's signature, and she couldn’t provide it because she didn't have a husband.
She did work for a senator, though, so she brought the problem to him, and he asked for evidence that this was happening to other women. Card coordinated with the National Organization for Women, and within six weeks, they collected three thousand letters.
The letters became testimony before the National Commission on Consumer Finance (NCCF): doctors who could not get mortgages, lawyers who could not get credit cards, secretaries whose accounts had been closed upon marriage and reopened under their husbands' names. Two years later, President Ford signed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA).
In the United States, before the 1974 ECOA, a married woman's credit history did not exist independently of her husband's. Upon marriage, her accounts were transferred. She became Mrs. John Doe on the checks and statements. Whatever retail credit she had accumulated as a single woman was absorbed into her husband's file or erased. Women were denied credit because they had no history. They had no history because they were denied credit. A divorced woman, a widow, found herself credit invisible. No score, no file, no record recognized by the system.
Mortgage lenders required married women of childbearing age to submit sworn affidavits regarding their reproductive intentions. A married working woman, the actuarial theory went, would eventually become pregnant, leave the workforce, and default on her debts. Her income was therefore discounted by half, or excluded entirely, unless she could demonstrate she would not conceive. The NCCF hearings documented notes from gynecologists confirming contraceptive use, signed pledges to terminate a pregnancy if one occurred, and documentation of a husband's vasectomy.*
The ECOA subsequently made it illegal to deny credit on the basis of sex or marital status. Lenders were required to report credit history in both spouses' names. They were required to explain denials in writing. A woman could now accumulate a credit file under her own name, and that file would follow her through marriage, divorce, and widowhood.
The industry saw an opportunity. Millions of customers who were previously ineligible were now legally protected. In 1977, Master Charge launched a campaign around a single word. A woman in a store, short on cash, asks about layaway. The clerk refuses. Christmas special. She tries a deposit. Postage stamps. Suddenly, another woman rudely cuts in line: You take Master Charge, don't you? The clerk brightens. Master Charge, of course. The voiceover arrives: You've just seen clout in action. Clout is your Master Charge card, your personal account for Christmas shopping in over 2 million places. Carry clout and relax.
Another spot went further. Women of America, are you in charge? A succession of women answer. I'm in charge. The voiceover: Master Charge wants to give you all the clout you're working for, so when you shop, you can say, I'm in charge. That's real clout. The spot closes on a woman at a desk: I'm not president of the company yet, but I'm still in charge.
In 1979, Master Charge became MasterCard. The company said the new name reflected the broadening of the association's services beyond the charge card itself. The Clout campaign died with the old name. The new slogan was Master the Possibilities. The Clout ads had addressed women who remembered the baby letter. The Possibilities ads assumed no such memory. They sold vacations, furniture, and a life arranged on a monthly payment plan.
A woman who lived through the transition described her mother rushing home with a credit card. The card had her mother's name on it. In 1974, that was worth showing someone. But the algorithm that replaced the loan officer carried its own burdens. Women with shorter credit histories received lower scores. The decades of exclusion had left them with thin files, and thin files meant higher rates, smaller limits.
Card wrote a book called Ms. Money. Women had won the right to carry debt in their own names. Deprived of gender as a proxy for risk, lenders turned to automated scoring. The FICO score, introduced in 1989, descends from this period.
Don't miss Yes, women had access to credit before 1974 published last March by Patricia Patnode.
Leslie Priggen, the professional featured in the banner image, went on to become a successful painter.
* These practices were documented in testimony before the National Commission on Consumer Finance and in the 1977 Penn Law Review article Gender, Maternity Leave, and Home Financing: A Critical Analysis of Mortgage Lending Discrimination Against Pregnant Women.